Getting Spiritual Direction

In Following the Way of The Lord

A few thousand years ago, a young man, named Samuel, who was studying for the priesthood, was awakened four times in one night by a voice calling his name.

On the first three occasions, he got up and went to his supervisor Eli's bedside in response to that call. But on none of those occasions did the supervisor call. After Samuel showed up at his bedside for the third time, the supervisor, being a mature God-fearing man, said to the youngster, 'The next time you hear that voice respond by saying, 'Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth."

And God did tell him what He wanted him to do.

THE ABOVE story forms part of the call narrative of the priest Samuel of Old Testament fame (I Samuel 3). But in the minds of many it is a classic biblical model to describe the nature of spiritual direction.

"What Eli does is not add anything new. He just basically says 'What's going on? You are hearing a voice, what is the voice saying to you. This is what you might say in response to the voice. It is pointing the person back to his own experience of God, and helping him to explore that. In a sense it is not giving any new information. It is helping the person, as a companion would," says Fr. Joe McHugh, Director of Novices at the Jesuit Centre for Religious Development, which shares the campus of St. George's College for Boys on North Street, Kingston.

A spiritual director is not someone who issues instructions but a companion on one's journey of faith, Fr. McHugh explained.

Such a person is "someone who has some familiarity with the way God has worked with people through history. A spiritual director is not so much someone who has the answers, but someone who helps an individual focus on his/her own experience of God."

Even in the mundane things, God communicates with us, says Fr. McHugh. "What a spiritual director does is to help a person sift through their experiences on a regular basis and to see what in that experience may have been God trying to get that person's attention. And then to help the person go back to that experience and to explore it and maybe communicate with God in their own prayer about what that means."

"So normally it is a process that would be carried on a regular basis ­ you meet with the spiritual director maybe once a month. Then you begin to talk about the experiences that you have had, and the feelings that came upon you as a result of those experiences, you see patterns and you say, 'Maybe this is God.'

For example, a woman came to me, she was looking for God and she said, 'I have been looking for God for years but it is so confusing. Looking for God for me is like looking for a drop of water in the sea.' What she did not realise is that in order to look for that one drop of water, she was actually surrounded by water, and she was missing God because she was focused on this one drop of water. And eventually she came to realise that God was in places she never dreamed God could be.

So the direction process was just a question of helping this woman to focus on experiences, she had ­ that we all have," Fr. McHugh says.

The discipline of spiritual direction has for thousands of years been a feature of Roman Catholic tradition. It owes much of its formative development to the ascetics who lived in the Egyptian deserts in the first four centuries after the birth of Christ. It became firmly associated with monasticism.

Protestants historically have not been strong on spiritual direction. They have preferred to stress a person's direct and unmediated relationship with God. Many have viewed the function of spiritual directors with suspicion. But that is changing, notably in the United States. Programmes in spiritual direction are popping up at many evangelical colleges.

At least one major theological institution, Biola University now offers Master's degree in Soul Care and Spiritual Formation. A growing number of evangelicals are strongly advocating the benefits of spiritual direction ­ among the most prominent has been famed clinical psychologist, Dr. Larry Crabb, author of such texts as Finding God.

In a story appearing last May on the website of Christianity Today Magazine, the publication said of Dr. Crabb: "He turned his back on diagnostic counselling methods in order to care for people's souls in an unpredictable, unprofessional, fickle, and in his opinion, most useful context: caring relationships. He now believes that there's no better psychotherapy than friendships fashioned after the everlasting friendship between Father, Son and the Holy Spirit."

Fr. McHugh explained that there are a few basics for his getting into a relationship with someone as a spiritual director. Firstly, there is a presumption that the person has a relationship with God or has a God who is relational, or have an image of God with whom they can communicate and who can communicate back to them.

With this in mind, he asks the directee early in the relationship 'What is God to you?', 'How do you see God?' (He made the observation that for many who walk alongside in spiritual direction, their sense of God is that of an angry father.)

Secondly, he asks, "How do you pray? How do you normally go about the process of prayer. Do you have to be in complete isolation for prayer. Is it something for which you speak words. Do you have a set series of prayers. Are you able just to talk about the things that happen to you in the day and how do you feel about those things.

Are you able to be quiet to be quiet and listen within the prayer.

Thirdly, he asks, "How would you like me to be helpful. How do you see me being helpful to you in that process.

If the person says I want you to tell me what to do. I would have to say, I can't do that. What I can help you to do, however, is to focus on what might be saying to you through your own experience.

Fr. McHugh measures his success in this ministry "by their fruits."

One of the standards he uses for effectiveness is the reports of progress his directees report in attaining growth and the concurrent deepening in their experience of God. He also looks, too, for them to be a kind of catalyst to influence society in a positive way.

The benefits of spiritual direction to directees, he said, is that such persons become more Spirit-led. They also grow to live their "lives more in communion with God and by extension with the people of God. Somehow they are participating more in the enterprise of God's Creation, and are doing it willingly, and not resisting every step of the way."

On becoming a spiritual director "BEING A good spiritual director requires not a doctorate but mature theological knowledge, a degree of holiness and a knack for discernment," says Chris Armstrong and Steven Gertz of Christian History Magazine, in an article published on www.christianitytoday.com.

On the same website, Jeanette Bakke, author of Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction, and professor at Bethel Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, points out that "Usually people don't set out to become spiritual directors. They have been drawn toward deepening their relationship with God. They have been seeking God alone in reading Scripture, prayer ­ which is both listening and speaking ­ solitude and silence, perhaps writing, discernment, questions, struggles.

"Seeking to be with God in a deeper way makes a space for others to be there also. Others are not asking for advice as much as they are asking, 'Will you walk alongside me and listen to God with me, to help me recognise what I'm hearing and where I might have blind spots," says Professor Bakke.

Fr. McHugh says the spiritual director should be a person of prayer, someone who takes his/her own prayer life seriously and prays regularly and has a strong relationship with God. Experience is the biggest qualifier in spiritual direction. Human beings, he said, have an enormous capacity for self-delusion. With experience, he hinted, a spiritual director is more keenly aware of the snares and the ways in which people can trick themselves.

"One of the key prerequisites is to be a good listener, too.

To really pay attention to what a person is saying with their words, with their gestures. A spiritual director is a person who feels himself and is able to kind of identify with what another person might be experiencing. And even to name something that a person might not be able to say. Formal pastoral training, he said, is particularly useful in such an instance. A person might be feeling very sad but is unable to say that. The spiritual director might say something like, 'If I were you I would be very sad. The person might respond, 'I am sad.' The director might say, 'Can you talk to God about this sadness'."

Last, but not least, Fr. McHugh says a spiritual director should be a person, who is also regularly receiving spiritual direction.

By Mark Dawes, Jamaica Gleaner April 10, 2004